


The Fountain

by Yahtzee



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies), Mad Max: Fury Road
Genre: Amputation, Canon-Typical Violence, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Injury Recovery, Major Illness, Past Rape/Non-con, Rescue, Slow Burn, The Wives ship Max/Furiosa, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-03
Updated: 2015-06-25
Packaged: 2018-04-02 16:02:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4066027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yahtzee/pseuds/Yahtzee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four years ago--or maybe three--Max found some small measure of hope and redemption on the Fury Road. Since then, he's never been back, never tried to hear how Furiosa and the Wives fared, never even let himself travel too far to the West. But now, dying of flesh rot, Max is captured by a raiding party and is forced to face what he has feared the most since that terrible time three years ago. Or maybe four.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Act of a Desperate Man

 

Years are difficult to measure in a land without plants, without snow. The last clock Max saw had been rigged into somebody's hubcap, its hands spinning around without reason. Sometimes he tries to keep the passage of time straight in his head, but generally he doesn't bother. If he were to guess, however, he would say it had been almost three years since he had come to this part of the land.

His eyes turn to the West. He has never continued farther in that direction, not since the fall of Immortan Joe. Yet he always looks there, always wonders.

Better not to know.

Ever since his car was torched – four years ago, or three – Max has ridden a motorcycle. It's a good bike, fast and agile, still bearing the markings of the fallen Vuvalini from whose body he took it. (The other voices of the past taunt Max, beg him, hate him. The Vuvalini warrior just laughs for the joy of speed when he guns the motor. Makes a nice change.) But it's harder to come by parts as more of the mountain gangs choose to go two-wheeled. People assume he's with one of the gangs, now, which clears his path but sooner or later might earn him a knife in his back. It's a quicker death than most.

Quicker than dying of flesh rot, that's for sure. Max's death sentence is even now gnawing into his calf, feasting on muscle and tunneling for bone.

Flesh rot's a bad way to go. When Max realized how deeply the infection had set in, his first thought had been to drive his motorcycle to the top of the highest cliff he could find. Then he could gun the motor, sail off the edge, and spend the last few seconds before his mercifully swift death finding out how it felt to fly.

But if he were the kind of man who'd commit suicide, he would have done it a long time before.

Instead, Max has decided to make one last effort to find the Sea. They say it's dried up far past its old shores; most of those who claim to have found it left in bitterness. Who could bear seeing so much water and being unable to drink any of it? There's no hope there. Just proof of the world they'd once had. The one that's been killed.

Max can look for it now that he expects nothing. He only wants to see it. To die looking at sunlight on water and pretending he's in the time before. Maybe he'll allow himself the rare luxury of drowning.

No making it that far on his motorcycle, not with his leg aching more by the day. A car would go farther. So. Time to swap out.

By the time he turns in the direction of Junktown, it's late afternoon, the sun drooping near the horizon. Max's expectations are low. Solid as his bike is, he won't be able to trade it for anything but the mere shell of a car and its motor. But if it runs, he can travel, and if he can travel, he can salvage parts. Max knows how to build something out of nothing.

Well before Junktown, however, he sees another small huddle of buildings in the far distance. A new town or settlement, then, one he doesn't know. It lies between him and his destination; going around would involve significant detours. Weeks, at least. The flesh rot will have him off his bike faster than that. But riding too near an unfamiliar settlement is asking for trouble. Max stands for a long while, astride his motorcycle, staring at the distant shadows at the horizon.

Finally he decides not to waste time he doesn't have.

Coming into one of the larger settlements works one of two ways. One, they come out to meet you, interrogate you, and try to kill you if they don't like your answers. Sometimes they don't like any answer you could give. Two, they wait just behind their boundary lines, guns loaded, eyes narrowed, silent as stone. The second kind might seem safer, but he's learned the hard way—better if people turn on you before you're surrounded. But usually they don't flat-out attack, not this close to town. Most larger settlements depend on trade, which means they need travelers to feel they might survive their approach.

But the smaller settlements—the ones who don't want visitors—they usually take you out a hell of a long way before you can see more than a faint blur on the horizon. And it looks like that's what he's found.

He sees the spikes first, emerging from the clouds of sand before the grills of the jeeps ever show. For one split second Max thinks these must be raiding parties out to attack Junktown—not after him. That's a split second too long.

Max wheels the bike around and guns it, but by now he can hear the engines. Years since his ears have been familiar with the sound of human voices, but he can still gauge horsepower by the whine of metal alone. His bike is outclassed, and this terrain leaves him no strategic ground, nowhere to hide.

The barbed metal hook they throw snags not his flesh but his wheel. He sees it in the instant before his world lurches, turns upside down, flings him out. Max lands face-first, jarring every bone, gravel and grit scouring his skin as he skids to a stop. Spitting sand from his mouth, he pushes himself up on his burning leg to run for it. If they just want the bike, they might let him go.

No such luck.

Only after the wire noose has snagged him, after he's on his knees listening to his captors cackle, does Max realize he could've just turned around and rammed them. Blown up their jeeps and his motorcycle in one great crash that would've taken him out a hell of a lot faster than the flesh rot burning inside his leg. Could've given these bastards the hot death they deserved, at the cheap price of his life.

But he wouldn't have done it, not even to avoid his capture. Even now, defeated in the dust, doomed by the rot, one word burns brighter in Max's heart than any other: _Survive_.

That's what he calls it. Survival. Not hope.

The last time Max believed in hope was four years ago, or three.

 

**

 

"I'm telling you now, Venny! They'll like this. Gonna get us in good with the Waterkeeper, you wait and see."

"We shoulda just took the bike. Done him out there and let the sand bury him."

"Then we wouldn't have no proof, would we? Waterkeeper's gotta know we're a _real_ town, not just some boards set up. Real like Junktown, yeah? Otherwise we don't get water. Well, real towns don't let _shlanger_ scum run through their borders, do they?" A boot slams into Max's side, stealing his shallow breaths; he's trussed in the back of the jeep with wires so tight they're rubbing through his skin. He hears his captor laugh, pleased with his own cheap power. "This'll show 'em."

Max tries to breathe deeply. There's no point in fighting this, not now, when he has no chance of escape. You had to let fate take you as far down as it liked while you waited for your moment. Then, when the moment came, you took it or died trying. For now, he has to wait.

His view of the new settlement is sideways, fragmented—the hood of netting they've put over his head creates a gray haze over structures the color of sand. Jostled as he is by the jeep's bumpy ride, it takes Max a while to realize the streets are all but deserted. No lizard-sellers, no urchins with dusty faces holding their hands out for food, not even regular passers-by. Only the endless huts and shanties, leaning in on each other, scoured different shades of gold and red by the desert sand. Even over the motor, he would be able to hear voices, if there were any. Instead, outside of this rumbling box of pain, he is surrounded by silence.

Max's gut clenches. Noise means activity. Activity means the potential for chaos. Chaos means opportunity. Silence is stillness. Stillness is death.

The fire in his leg reminds him that death is his constant companion now, the one partner on the road he cannot leave behind. Yet Max wants a death of his choosing; it is the one small gift he asks of the world, the only request humble enough to be granted.

 _Stay with me, Max!_ the Sprog cries. She comes to him less often now; ever since she saved him four years ago, or three, she has been very quiet. Max is tempted to think of her being at peace. But there are moments, like this one, where she pipes up. _Stay awake!_

Yes. He has to keep looking for his opportunity. Maybe it will come today.

"They're still here!" yells the one called Venny as the jeep jerks to a halt. Max rolls against the side with a huff of pain. "Let's show 'em, quick!"

Max is hauled out of the back like a sack of car parts, and dumped on the ground just as roughly. There's some swearing as they realize he can't walk while trussed, and it wouldn't look shine to stagger in breathing hard with this heavy bastard on their shoulders. Carefully Max keeps his eyes on the ground, slightly unfocused, as he hears the boltcutters snap his metal twine. His captors must not realize how alert he is to the fact that he can walk now. And kick. And run. He doesn't even see the boltcutters until they're carelessly dropped in the sand by his boots.

(He remembers boltcutters. Remembers being set free by them, using them to set others free. But he will not think of them, he will not ask, he will not wonder. Not about any of those he rode and fought with then, but least of all about _her_. He does not look to the West.)

The raiding party hauls him to his feet. Max allows his head droop just far enough to convince them he's dazed, not so far he can't take stock of his surroundings. Three guys on the raiding party. No ranks, no rituals, no official sanction for their actions—this was spontaneous, then. They do not have a procedure for prisoners. They will be improvising.

Good. Max can improvise too.

He is marched down stairs roughly hewn from rock; the unbearable brightness of the sun blinks out in an instant. Blinking, Max welcomes the cooler air, its scent slightly musty like all underground places. But he can smell people too, lots of them, and the murmurs of many are growing louder. As he steps finally onto level ground, he hears one voice amplified over all the others.

"We should earn our _own_ water ration!" booms a man, with the sound of one trying to rally a crowd. But he is met with no cheers. "Not have to go begging and scraping to Junktown every time we need a drop!"

Someone—a woman—starts to say, "Junktown shouldn't—"

"We're our own town!" yells one of Max's captors as they emerge into a larger space, maybe big enough to hold a couple hundred. Although Max's eyes are still adjusting to the dark, he can see that the place is filled to capacity, people lining the walls, which are slightly tilted. The effect is that of an amphitheater, or an arena. Please, not an arena.

But he got out of the Thunderdome in one piece. So he can get out of this.

The wire around his arms is looser now, because they cut it at the legs. It's getting more slack with every step—which is to say, not that slack, but enough that it could be pulled away with considerable effort.

He lifts his eyes from the floor to search for anything useful. Heavy, barbed poles outline this central space. The barbs come to sharp points. Narrow. Useful.

"We've got our own boundary lines!" shouts another of the raiding party. The murmuring around them grows louder as Max stumbles into view. "We take care of our own! And when dirty thievin' scum comes to rob us, we shred 'em!"

A few people cheer; others cry out in dismay. Max pays little heed to the latter group. He knows better than to rely on sympathy.

Again that woman's voice—strong and somehow soothing—"Nobody needs to shred anyone."

That wins a retort from the Loud One in charge. "You don't make the rules here, Waterkeeper!"

Four steps to a post. The captors are listening to the argument. He has become only a prop to them. A thing.

( _We are not things_!)

Opportunity has arrived.

Max spins to the side, gets one look at the startled face of his captor before he head-butts the guy so hard Max sees stars. But it hits the other guy worse, and he's still falling to the ground as Max lunges for the post. One of the barbs hooks under the wire, and he pulls down savagely. Wire scraps his skin raw, tears at his ear until he thinks it'll come off, but fuck it, he doesn't need an ear, he needs to get the hell out of here.

The last coils rake over his face, pulling off his hood and yanking out some of his beard in the process, and Max is free. They're coming for him now, hands raised, but he barrels toward them, crashing hard enough to send them sprawling. Venny drops his staff, which means it's Max's staff now. He spins it up into fighting position and gets to the center of the floor. By now people are shrieking in panic. Once he could have yelled over the lot, but he can't remember the last time he used his voice. Would sound even come out? Not here to rob anybody, he wants to say. Just want to go my own way. Let me go my own way and nobody else has to get hurt.

But his captors are up and running toward him. Max braces for the fight, and then—

"Hold!" The woman's voice fills the room. Mutterers in the crowd silence themselves; the raiding party stops in their tracks. She says, "Killing this man won't convince me to grant you an independent water ration. It will only convince me you're savages. Like Joe."

A roar of protest goes up from the crowd. There is no insult greater than this, to be like … Joe.

 _Immortan Joe?_ Has to be. Nobody else could be hated so much.

And Max has begun to believe he knows this woman's voice.

_Turn around and see her. No, don't. Turning around is the same as hoping. You know better._

But Max's ragged heart still imagines that it would be _her_ speaking. Only one way to kill such painful illusions: Burn them to ash with the unsparing truth.

So Max turns around. And either he is mad, or his heart has stopped lying because this woman standing at the head of this assembly with her short hair—her laundered clothes—the left arm of metal—

His voice cracks like parched earth when he says the first word he has in months. "…Furiosa?"

She startles. Comprehension dawns in her eyes as she says, " _Max_?"

Is he dreaming? Surely he is dreaming. The withered corpse of this world holds no such joy, not any longer. This is a fever dream spiked by the flesh rot in his leg, burning hot. The flickering torches on the walls are tricking the light.

And yet this is Furiosa's face. Her hand. And in her eyes blazes the mixture of compassion and rage that is the very core of her.

_Furiosa. She's alive. She's still alive._

"You know this one?" bellows Loud Man, obviously hoping to regain some control of the situation. "Is he yours, then? A scout come to spy on us?"

"I have no need to spy on you. You have nothing I require." Furiosa steps down from the small earthen dais, walking toward Max. He just stands there as his body shakes from exhaustion and adrenalin overload. His palms are sweaty against the battle staff; he does not let it drop. Reality could still change around him, show him that everything he perceives is a lie. It's happened before. But it does sound so much like Furiosa's voice when she asks, "Max, are you all—"

"He's still an intruder!" Loud Man has become desperate to reassert his authority. "Still came within our lines! It's up to us to say what happens to him. Unless you came here as a _conqueror_?"

Furiosa flinches at the word. But her voice is even and commanding as she speaks again to the crowd, not to him. "You honor me for freeing our land by slaying the tyrant Immortan Joe. But in those days of battle, one man rode at my side. He risked his own life many times, and would have given it gladly. When I was injured and near death, he even gave me the blood from his own veins. _Any_ visitor deserves better than this from you, but this man—you owe this man your life and freedom as surely as you owe it to me. As much as I owe mine to him." Furiosa scans the crowd, looking for agreement. She must not find as much as she'd hoped, because her voice turns to steel without rust as she finishes, more loudly: "While I live, he lives."

The Loud Man slumps. Murmuring kicks up again, and the chatter is more excited than angry. Max realizes his life has just been saved, but he can hardly take it in yet. He can go no farther than dropping the staff.

Furiosa walks toward him more quickly now, her steps swifter by the second. Max knows what she's going to do, and even though he saw the gesture only once, he'd never forgotten it. When she gets right up to him, he brings up his right arm, just as she does hers. He curves his palm around the back of her neck, feeling the scars of Joe's brand on her skin just as she must feel his. Then she gently tips her forehead to his so that they are staring each other in the eye.

Before the gesture merely seemed … memorable. Now Max feels the tenderness of it. The connection. The purity of gazing into another's face and seeing nothing but warm and welcome.

Max wants her to see that too, so he tries to smile. Maybe it works, because his chapped lips crack.

"What are you doing here?" she whispers intently.

"Tryin' to get to Junktown. For a car." It's all the reason he would have to give, but Max hears the truth spilling from his mouth anyway. "Flesh rot's got me. Gonna die sooner or later. Thought I'd try dying near the Sea, if I could find it. Can't find the Sea without a car."

"Flesh rot?" Furiosa says, ignoring the rest. "Where?"

"My leg."

Max doesn't bother looking down when she does. Already he knows what she sees: his pant leg dried to the wound on his lower calf, fabric now dark with dried pus and blood.

"That's bad," Furiosa says. Her eyes have taken on that faraway look that means she's thinking fast. "But we could treat it. We could try, anyway. You'll have a chance if you come with me to the Fountain."

"The Fountain?"

Her smile is switchblade-quick. "Immortan Joe called it the Citadel. But it's the Fountain now."

The Fountain. Waterkeeper. It sounds like—like she's made a go of it, but— "It's better when I go my own way."

"Your own way is going to get you killed. Come with me, Max. Try."

It's useless and she knows it. Nobody bounces back from the flesh rot when its this bad. Max does not want to go to the Citadel, or the Fountain or whatever they call it now—because he does not want to see what has happened. He does not want to be disappointed.

He's still trying to think of the quickest, least arguable way to say this when Furiosa adds one more word, low and desperate: "Survive."

Even now, Max must survive. He has to live under he's dead.

"Right, then," he says, which is when the fever and the stress and the flesh rot and the stock all come together to smash him like a club. He drops to his knees—barely bracing himself against Furiosa's legs. Max shakes. He disbelieves. But if Furiosa wants him along for a ride, he's gonna go.

That is Max's last concrete, lucid thought before he passes out.

 

 

**

 

Continued soon --


	2. Water Spilled on Ungrateful Sand

Furiosa's heart lurches as Max kneels at her feet. His hand braces against her thigh, the touch intimate in ways that have nothing to do with sex, everything to do with trust.

She trusts this man she knew for three days, three years ago, more than she trusts a good eighty percent of the people who now fill her life. Furiosa has told herself she doesn't mind being wary; it's better than being beaten down, better than what she had before. True. But the mere sight of Max has suddenly reminded her of the tremendous gulf between feeling safer and feeling _safe._

The last time she felt safe—really, the only time since her abduction from the Vuvalini as a child—was upon their return to what had been the Citadel, when Max braced her atop the car and helped her to stay on her feet. When they stood together above the shredded corpse of Immortan Joe, she heard the crowds cry _Let them up! Let them up!_ The power she felt then came only partly from Max, and a small part at that. But it mattered. It will always matter.

Then Max slumps onto the earthen floor, and Furiosa realizes he's passed out.

She kneels beside him, puts her hand to his neck to check his pulse, which remains strong. But the fever heat she felt in his skin burns even higher than she first guessed. And his leg…

_She lay trembling in the healer-mother's tent, Mama holding onto her right hand, the one she got to keep. "You will have to be both smart and brave, my girl," Mama had whispered. "Brave to lose your arm, smart to learn how to do without it."_

_"I can," Furiosa had said. "I am."_

_Then the healer-mother had pressed a cloth over Furiosa's face, one that darkened the world until she awakened into pain like none she had ever known before or since._

_Nobody had told her the hand could hurt more after it was cut off. That she'd still feel it. That the agony would still make her want to scream._

To this day, Furiosa's phantom limb sometimes twitches. It does so now as she looks down at Max, longing to cradle his battered body in both hands and give him the sense of safety he gave her three years ago. Her prosthetic is good for so many things—better than the hand she was born with, in countless ways—but not cradling, not comforting.

It is, however, extremely good at convincing people to listen to her. To judge by the angry, confused buzzing of the crowd around her, some convincing is still in order.

With her metal fingers, she points at the scrubby youths who function as the pit crew for visiting "dignitaries" here at Parttown. "Clear the roads. I'm leaving in five minutes, and this man is coming with me."

The belligerent leader of Parttown—a loud-voiced, red-faced man known as Walleyed Hatchet—tries to assert his authority one more time. "This man's a criminal, Waterkeeper Furiosa. Maybe he helped you a few years ago, but who's to say what he is now? He trespassed into our territory. Could've become a dangerous man."

Furiosa looks down at Max, this once-strong man only a crumpled heap at her feet. His leg is so ruined, so far gone, that already dampness spreads across the sand, lifeblood and deathrot flowing out together. _Dangerous._

"I'll take the risk." She stands up, using every inch of her considerable height, weighting every word she speaks with the countless gallons of water she controls. "And if you want to enforce borders, you should mark them. There are no boundary lines around Parttown. Not one fence, not one sign. It's almost like you _wanted_ travelers to intrude, so you could claim their property." Hatchet swells up like a bubble on oil that's been brought to the boiling point. Furiosa heads off the protest before he can say a word of it, because he's not worth the time Max doesn't have. "This once, I'm giving you a water ration. My drivers will bring it tomorrow. We'll discuss this again at Seasonturn. Mark your borders, stop the raiding parties—and we'll see."

Hatchet stopped listening the moment she said the water would be there tomorrow. No borders will be marked; raiding parties will still ride.

All they have to do for water is keep the peace. That's all Furiosa has ever asked, the one thing the Fountain stands for. And hardly any of these fools can understand. They'd rather fight over scraps than receive bounty in peace.

It would make her cry, if it didn't make her want to kill.

But she needs to think about preserving life, not taking it. Her anger wastes time, burning up more of the precious few days or hours Max has left.

 

**

 

Furiosa learned the fool's name at the moment of her resurrection.

"I am so sorry," he had whispered, and then pain had blossomed bright in her side, giving her back her breath. For one instant, her surroundings snapped back into vivid focus: The tearstained faces of the Wives nearest her, the smell of grease and blood and the drug warboys called Chrome, the fool's profile silhouetted by the light filtering in through the car windows. But paradoxically, the sudden rush of oxygen into her starved bloodstream had swiftly dizzied her past consciousness.

The world went black from the outside in. Furiosa's last sight had been his eyes, so much kinder than they had any right to be in his weathered, weary face. As the darkness closed over her, Furiosa had assumed this to be the moment of her death. She tried to remember the Vuvalini mourning cries she had sung for her mother; maybe she would hear her mother singing them back to her as she shepherded her daughter to the other side.

Although Furiosa did not want to die, she had been…ready. Immortan Joe was dead. Four of the five Wives had survived and would live their lives as they chose, and at least poor Agharad had been able to taste freedom for a few precious hours. Two of the Vuvalini would help liberate the Citadel; the others had fallen as warriors and liberators, the deepest honor any Vuvalini could attain. The fool would be all right. And every wound Furiosa had suffered at Immortan Joe's hands—from her capture to her servitude to the bone-deep stab that would kill her—above all, Mama's death—every last one of them had been avenged.

So it was with resignation, and even peace, that she felt the pain and noise drift away. The final words Furiosa expected to hear in her lifetime were the fool's: "No. No, no, no—"

Then there had been a time of quiet that was not silence, of rest that was not sleep. Pain never left her, but Furiosa was past minding it. She was beyond fear, and that alone seemed to be enough.

Until she began to understand the voice whispering just above her.

" _Max_."

Although the gashes in her side continued to burn, Furiosa became aware of another, smaller pain—a tiny dart in the crook of her intact arm.

"C'mon," the fool pleaded. "Hang in there. Hang in there. Almost back."

Back. Back where? Her mind supplied an image—a memory—from the salt. The fool telling them all that escape was denied, but not victory. That the Citadel could be theirs. He had held out his hand to her, offering her his loyalty and his life in a struggle that had long since ceased to be his own. And she had taken it.

Other images rushed in, too: the war rig, her stabbing, Toast's abduction, and then the moment when Furiosa had grabbed Immortan Joe's breathing apparatus and ripped his fucking throat out _through his face…_

 _Joe's dead_ , she thought, _I'm alive._

"C'mon," the fool whispered. She realized his hands cradled her face, holding her more tenderly than anyone had since her mother's death. "Furiosa, come on."

She had opened her eyes. He'd gone shock-still, mouth hanging open, clearly unable to trust what he saw. Furiosa took in the tubing snaking down his arm into her own, the thin red line that connected his heart to hers.

 _Blood bag,_ Nux had called him. The Citadel had tried to turn the fool into a thing too. But the servitude that had been forced onto him, he now gave freely for her sake.

She loved him then. That very moment.

The emotion was neither so innocent nor as intimate as falling in love—romantic love—if she understood those concepts, though Furiosa wasn't sure she did. This was the same love she felt for the precious few friends she'd had in her life, for the Vuvalini, for the Wives, for her mother—for the roar of a strong engine, the feel of speed and the bright bold horizon ahead--even for air and water and sky. The love for something or someone that made life worth living, the kind that rooted in the bone and could never be torn away: She knew then that she felt this way about him and always would.

And from the dawning hope in his eyes, she knew he had that love for her too.

More memories came back, clearer now, reminding her of the needle sliding into her arm. He'd whispered to her that whole time, and his words took shape in her mind.

Furiosa had taken the deepest breath she could, enough to say his own words back to him. "Your name," she gasped. "It's – Max."

Max had laughed out loud for joy. Then he laughed again in surprise at hearing his own laughter, or for the strangeness of joy, and if Furiosa had had the strength she would have laughed with him.

Instead she only said his name again, the last time she would speak directly to him until the present day.

" _Max_."

 

**

 

Although the people of Parttown are mostly busy scrabbling to fill their canteens and jugs with water from the ration, enough of them remain grateful for her generosity to help her get Max into the Ewer.

(So Capable named the vehicle in which Furiosa made most of her "diplomatic missions." A ewer apparently was a type of water jug—they'd been able to be picky about shapes and sizes and materials, in the time before—and Capable had thought this would set the right tone. Generous, practical, simple.

"They won't get it," Toast had said. "Nobody's ever going to bother thinking past the one basic fact: We've got water and they don't."

Toast always was smart.)

"You want we should tie him for you?" suggests the burly woman who helped settle Max's semi-conscious form into the shotgun seat. "Maybe not the feet—looks like that one might come right off with a bit of encouragement. But we could do his hands."

"I don't need him bound," Furiosa says, resisting the urge to scream at these people's continued, willful shortsightedness. "I need him comfortable, and I need him alive."

The burly woman looks down at Max, who sits slumped with his head to one side. His eyes remain closed. By now it's nearly dark. "Alive's up to fate," the woman finally says. "Comfortable, though—"

She holds out a small canister that Furiosa belatedly realizes contained alcohol—no doubt the local moonshine. It's as much painkiller and sedative as Max will have until they reach the Fountain. It's also the first sensible thing anyone from Parttown has done all day.

"Thank you," Furiosa says in sincere gratitude. But already the woman is wandering off to make sure her lover or daughter or whoever that was had gotten their full share of the ration.

 _Waterkeeper_ , they call her. Furiosa knows she needs the title, but she hates it. When Toast had suggested she come up with something, just to make her authority clear, Furiosa had found the perfect thing. _Watergiver._ The people of the Wasteland could know that all the water they would ever need was theirs for the asking, theirs for the small price of laying down arms and starting no wars.

But they don't know it. They refuse to learn. And Furiosa had to listen as her title warped, became twisted, and focused not on all the water she gives, but the water she holds back.

Max groans and shifts in his seat. He is only conscious enough to feel pain. Furiosa steadies his chin as she tips the moonshine toward his lips. Although he coughs and sputters, he manages to swallow some before he passes out again.

His leg is as bad as she'd ever seen. Furiosa remembers her own last look at her left arm, which had been swollen and black, the skin splitting in long lines that revealed fissures of infected flesh. She thinks it looked better than Max's leg does now.

 _It's poison,_ the mother-healer had told Furiosa as they began binding off the live part of her arm from the dead. _Poison in the meat of you. If the poison gets into your blood, that's when there's no hope. So we have to take the poison away before that happens. Do you understand?_

 _Yes_ , Furiosa had said, understanding all the facts and none of the reality.

By now enough people have their own water to start staring at hers: the large, puncture-proof barrels affixed to the Ewer's roof with metal bands. Nobody could pry them free without the key; this key was a part of Furiosa's hand, one that anyone unfamiliar with its workings would be unlikely to find, much less successfully operate. She makes this explicitly clear at every stop, every time, and yet they never cease their endless thirsty speculation.

" _They can't understand plenty yet_ ," Cheedo had said. " _It will take time_."

But how much time? How many more years will the Waterkeeper Furiosa endure their resentment? Will she ever represent more to them than a better version of Immortan Joe?

Tiredly, as she walks around to the driver's side of the Ewer, she thinks, _We cannot make a better world alone._

She had not set out to make a better world, though. Only to help a few people escape suffering. Furiosa lets go of all the greater concerns she cannot change and focuses on the one she possibly could.

If she can't save the world, maybe she can still save Max.

The slam of the door makes more of the Parttown folk stare in her direction, but there will be no betrayal from them today. Max groans again, a dull animal sound of pain.

Furiosa's phantom hand twitches within her metal one, longing to brush the short scrub of hair back from Max's face. Instead she reaches for the wheel.

_Drive like there's a storm coming. Drive like Joe's war parties are at your back._

_Drive for Max's life._


	3. The Scrape or the Slice

" _Help us_!"

Face swimming up out of the dark, swirling out of the sand, their tears and screams boiling endlessly before his face—

" _You didn't save us_!"

The rear-view mirror shows him endless cars and motorcycles gaining on him, he's going as fast as he can, but they're gaining and he doesn't dare even look ahead because if he stops looking behind they'll catch up, they'll get him for sure—

" _Where are you, Max_?"

They have him, they're dragging him down but he's going to take the bastards into death with him—

Consciousness jolts through Max like an electrocution. He startles, mid-swing, unable to understand where the gang riders all went, or why he's sitting upright. Why there's sunlight. Why he's alive.

"Hey," Furiosa says. "It's all right."

Is he back in the war rig? Or maybe he's _still_ in the war rig. Maybe they're on the run from Immortan Joe, he and Furiosa and the Wives, and everything since then has only been an ugly dream. The warboys must be right behind them, and for a moment Max imagines he can hear the thumping of far-off drums.

But no. This is a refitted military transport, clunky heavy undercarriage stripped out, two V-8 engines strapped in. No trailer drags behind them; no Wives huddle in the back seat.

Yet it is Furiosa sitting in the driver's seat, right hand on the gear shift, ready to take them up the nearby hills. They are heading straight west, running away from the sliver of sunrise behind them.

"Go back to sleep if you can," she says. He'd forgotten how soft her voice can become without losing any of its strength. "You need to rest."

Max shifts in his seat. The bone-deep burn in his leg reminds him that time is running out. To hell with sleep. "Where are we?"

"Only an hour's drive out from the Fountain." Her eyes flick toward him, though her profile remains pointed at the road. "You don't fall easy, Max, but when you do, you go down hard."

Shards of other memories begin to glint in the rubble of his mind. He woke enough to half-walk to this car, though Furiosa had her right arm around him the whole way, and a woman even taller than she braced him too. Once he was given something to drink, something that burned. Furiosa talked to him on the road, said a lot of things, but he couldn't make sense of them; all he knew was that she didn't expect him to. She was only reminding him that someone else was here, someone real, someone alive.

They crest a low, sloping hill, and on the far western horizon vast dark shapes begin to clarify against the last stretch of night sky. He'd know the silhouette anywhere. He has returned to the Citadel. The Fountain.

_Don't look west. Don't ask yourself what happened. Don't go back and learn how she fell._

Yet Furiosa still stands.

He shifts in his seat, but even that is too much movement for his leg. Aches ripple up through his marrow in nauseating waves, and Max groans, slumping against the door.

"Hang on," Furiosa says. The urgency in her voice is too close to fear. "We're almost there, Max. Almost home."

That last word ought to mean something, Max thinks. But he can't remember what.

 

**

 

He startles from a daze that isn't sleep when Furiosa fires out the window. Not bullets—instead, a powder flare soars into the sky, exploding white against the still-gray dawn. Two cars roll out to greet them, wary and armed, but when they see Furiosa's metal arm wave from her open window, they wave back.

Waving. Cheerfully. Max begins to wonder if the fever is weaving together his memories of the Citadel with his memories of the time before the last cities fell…

_A woman in a short white dress smiles at him; curly brown hair frames her face. In one hand she holds an ice cream cone (what was ice cream? It was good, he knows that, but what was it exactly?) And in the other arm she cradles a baby boy._

_The baby boy smiles at Max too. Max smiles back…_

He intentionally stomps his left foot on the floorboard. Pain lances through every nerve, his blood pressure does something it shouldn't, and the world darkens at the edges. Good. That's real, then. Reality is pain.

Furiosa gives him a look like he's mad, but her expression gentles as she realizes he very well may be. "Almost there."

When they come to a stop, Furiosa opens the door and starts to get out, but Max grabs her sleeve. When she frowns at him, he reaches under the dashboard; sure enough, there's a pistol hidden there, in the exact spot where he'd have stashed one himself. He presses it into her hand so she won't go out into danger unarmed.

"Max." She stares down at the pistol as if she had never seen one before. "We're home, okay? Home."

"How'd it go?" says a cheerful feminine voice, but then she gasps. "Who the hell—"

"A friend." Furiosa's tone is firm, but also … almost pleased.

The woman who led the greeting party leans in through the passenger side window, too close to his face. Max's fevered vision is too hazy for details, but he'd know that shocking red hair anyplace. He licks his cracked lips so he can get out the name. "…Capable?"

Her eyes go wide. "Burn my bones," she breathes. "It's _Max_." Then she turns and shouts to the others, "Furiosa the Waterkeeper found Max! The same Max from the stories! He's come back at last!"

The distant sound could almost be cheering, but Max doesn't trust it. He simply tries to focus on Capable's face, and fails.

"Get Solma, quick," Furiosa says as she hops back into the truck, ritual finished. "He needs medicine and who knows what else. Flesh rot in his leg."

Capable nods and runs toward the cars. The welcome party speeds back even faster than they do.

It's hard for him to fully take in the details of this place; at this point, anything farther away than Furiosa is hardly more than a blur. But the desert gives way to a settlement nestled at the feet of the Citadel…the Fountain. Max glimpses tents, shacks, even a few places of clay brick that look sturdy enough for permanence. When his weary eyes turn upward, he sees long growing vines—scraggly, probably thinner than they ought to be, but hanging on. Their leaves nearly obscure the skull-crest of Immortan Joe. Not quite, not yet. Maybe not ever.

Some scars don't heal. Some wounds outlast their inflictors. There will always be raw, ragged edges. There will always be blood.

 

**

 

Solma turns out to be an elderly woman, dark–skinned, with heavy gray dreadlocks that fall almost to her waist. Her "hospital" is a long, low-ceilinged room that must lie at the very heart of the Fountain; actual electric lights dangle from strings every few feet or so, and Solma herself has a torch that shines as bright as day. Around her huddle a few women and far more children, among them boys who must have been war pups three or four years ago. Now they are students of medicine, at least of a sort.

"How'd this start?" Solma says, her wrinkled hands peeling back the disgusting, sodden leg of Max's trousers. Maybe some of his skin, too. It's all the same greenish-black color by now.

"Got burnt." Max has to get the words out between fast, shallow breaths. What Solma's doing doesn't make his flesh rot hurt much worse than it did already, but he's at the point where any increase in the pain is nearly unbearable. "About three weeks ago. Tried keeping – keeping it clean, but –"

Furiosa stands beside his cot, staring down at his wound. Max hasn't let himself look at it in a few days, though he thought the sight could be no worse than the pain. He was wrong. The color isn't even the worst part; it's the strange swollen quality of his calf, contrasted with the gaping crater over his shin.

Solma points to it as she looks each of her students in the eye, in turn. "This here's the Green. Started out as dry Green, which takes a few weeks to get ya. Day or so ago, it turned wet, and wet Green's a hell of a lot worse. Takes ya down in a few days. Sometimes only hours."

"You mean he's dying," Furiosa says. Her voice is flat—so much so that it betrays the very emotion she's trying to hide. Max only wonders why she thought anything different after she learned about the flesh rot. That road only travels in one direction.

But Solma shrugs. "Might snatch him back yet. Thing with the Green is, ya die by inches. Cut the dead inches out, or off, the rest of ya might keep livin'."

Max feels a rush of horror at the idea of his leg being cut off—but it's Furiosa who says, "No amputations. Try cutting the rot out."

Solma nods as several of her young pupils begin darting in a dozen directions, no doubt to gather the knives. "Wash him down first. Get him clean and keep him clean. Shave him, too."

It was like this the first time Max came here, when it was the Citadel and not the Fountain: scrubbing and shaving and the infliction of pain. But that was so he could keep others alive. This is for his own sake. He doubts that will make it hurt less.

Furiosa looks down at Max. In the haze of fever he first thinks she's put on the greasepaint of a warboy or an imperator; then he realizes the shadows around her eyes are subtler than that, and sadder. The dull shine of her metal prosthetic makes him wonder how she lost her arm. The pain must have been pretty goddamned bad for her to insist on the scrape instead of the slice. He knows better than to ask her about it, especially now.

"We have some doze," Furiosa says. "It won't erase the pain, but it'll push it…farther away."

"Don't need anything." Max figures taking the brunt of it will make him pass out faster.

He can sit up enough to shuck his jacket and T-shirt, but the rest of his clothing is removed for him. They're careful with his boots, which is laughable given that two days ago, he had to slit one of them down both sides for his swollen foot to still fit inside. Even more careful with his leg brace, which he'd all but ceased to need in the past few years. (Max had told himself he wore it more out of habit than anything else. But the brace probably kept him standing these past couple of days; it saved his life one last time.)

What remains of his pants are cut away. Several hands pick him up and ease his entire body into warm water, a sensation so alien to Max that he can no longer believe he once found it routine.

(Did he? Was he a cop, a man with a wife and a child, with a house that blew hot or cold air whenever he pleased, a person who decided each day what he most wanted to eat? Or is that a story he once heard? Maybe someone told it to him, and he believes in it because he wants it so badly to have been true.

But the curly-haired woman and the baby boy – surely they were more than a dream.)

He scavenged a pair of good scissors from a derelict wreck about a year ago, and since then he's kept his hair and beard short. Although Max has a couple of razors, too, and prefers his face shaven, he has reserved those for other, more crucial uses of a sharp blade. Solma's minions shave him now, pretty much everywhere, though they leave a thin scrub atop his head, farthest from the wound. This is the main thing he notices until he realizes that Furiosa isn't facing him directly any longer. She hasn't left his side, but why has she turned her head?

Oh. He's naked. He doesn't care, or he didn't, but he feels more exposed with Furiosa _not_ looking at him.

"Good," Solma says, running her hand along the length of his body like a camel merchant assessing a beast's stamina. "The fella's sturdy, strong, otherwise healthy."

Furiosa nods. "That helps our chances."

Max wonders when they started being her chances too.

Once he's as clean as he's ever been in his life, Solma's young assistants slide a sturdy, clean stretch of fabric into the bath with him, then stretch it beneath him to lift him up. Water splashes over the rim of the tub, trickles down unheeded, as Max and the wet sheet are settled on a low platform unevenly padded with some kind of straw. Good for soaking up blood, he figures.

"Here." Furiosa acknowledges him again as she offers him a worn, braided strip of leather. "To bite down on."

"Not yet." Max finds he wants to be able to speak until the absolute last moment.

"All right. Want a drink?"

"Yeah."

She proffers first a stone cup of yet more water, which he gulps down gratefully. It wasn't like he didn't know Immortan Joe hoarded water, or thought the name "Fountain" would be meaningless, but the sheer ordinariness of water here amazes him. The harsh moonshine Furiosa gives him next is vile by comparison, but he swallows plenty. By now Solma is sharpening her blades. A quick burst of liquid courage is welcome.

"Do you want me to stay?" Furiosa says.

Max had not doubted for a moment she was willing to remain at his side. But he finds himself noticing her metal arm in a way he almost never did before. The hell he is about to experience, Furiosa remembers. "You don't have to. If it would be – bad."

"You're worrying about _me_ right now?"

He shrugs with one shoulder. Furiosa surely knows as well as he does that some torments are easier to bear than to observe. If not, she would never have risked her life for the sake of Immortan Joe's wives.

More quietly she asks, "Would it help you if I stayed? Or do you—not want anyone to see?"

Displaying vulnerability usually gets you killed. Revealing weakness is the ultimate intimacy. Max will soon be a braying, howling, mad thing; very little of the fighter she met on the Fury Road will remain. He would gladly hide this from virtually everyone he has ever known, either now or in the world before.

"Stay," he says.

Furiosa nods.

Solma begins explaining to her charges how quickly they'll have to work, how they'll need a tourniquet for this procedure but don't dare risk the rest of the already-damaged leg by leaving it on too long. Max wishes he didn't have to hear this—almost more than he wishes he didn't have to endure it. "Talk," he says to Furiosa.

"What do you want me to say?"

"Anything."

She hesitates. It's not that she doesn't understand his need for distraction; probably she understands better than anyone else ever could. But being an imperator or a road warrior or a Waterkeeper strips your words down like overtaxed gears. Small talk is one of the first things to go.

Every word matters.

"Why didn't you ever come back?" Furiosa asks. "I understood why you had to go. Whatever you were looking for out there, you still hadn't found it. But I thought you’d come back someday, for guzzoline or repairs or—or just to see what we'd built here. Were you so far away?"

Normally Max's response to such a direct and personal question would be a lie. He's too tired for that now.

"Didn't let myself come too close," he confesses. "Didn't even look west."

Furiosa's fingers stroke the remaining hair atop his head, the way she'd touch an animal she wanted to soothe. "Why?"

"Because—that day, when you were bleeding out—I needed you to live." He closes his eyes. Instead of this primitive operating room, he imagines himself in a car speeding along the sands, holding Furiosa's head in his hands. All the dead he had failed to protect had fallen silent, and he knew that if she joined them today, it would only ever be her voice he heard. Only be Furiosa's face she saw from then on. Max had not let himself need another person's survival like that since…

(Long ago, the curly-haired woman sang something silly to the baby boy. The words are lost; he only remembers the tune, and the way the little boy laughed. The baby's laughter is for one instant fresh in Max's mind, like new.)

Furiosa's eyes are an odd greyish-green color. Moonstone eyes. In them he sees that she understands what he means. These days nothing is more dangerous, more painful, than caring about anyone's life, including your own. But your own at least you can give up as you choose. Caring like that for another person's skin and soul—it was like agreeing to slice out a piece of your heart when you lost them.

And you always lost them, always, always.

Max swallows hard; his tongue and lips remain slightly numb from the moonshine. "But you didn't die. You got to your feet. And when I saw them cheering around you, and the Citadel was yours—I thought, this is it. They're as saved as they're ever gonna be. Furiosa won. She'll never be—stronger, or safer, than she is right at this minute. I saw them lifting you up, and I wanted that to be the last I saw of you ever. If I'd ever come back here and found you gone—"

He doesn't finish that sentence. Furiosa must realize he means that this would've cost him the last ragged shred of his heart.

Instead Max only repeats, "I needed you to live,"

Furiosa's voice falls almost to a whisper. "I need you to live too."

"I try," Max says, and this wins him a crooked smile.

"Try harder, fool." Then her moonstone eyes flick from his face toward Solma. Without being told, Max opens his mouth for the braided leather strap. Furiosa settles it between his teeth as if she were bridling a horse.

"No doze at all?" Solma shrugs. "Lash him down, then."

The former war pups stretch their straps over him as Solma begins tying off his leg. Furiosa lifts one of Max's arms to keep it unbound, then settles his hand in hers. "Hang on to me," she says.

Somehow it seems that he can.

Then Solma's knife makes his pain blossom into fire, and Max is biting down on the leather so hard he thinks he'll cut through it, and surely his grip is breaking Furiosa's, though she doesn't pull away. She'll hold onto him even when it hurts.

Max remembers her holding onto him on the war rig, when he dangled upside down, staring aghast at Immortan Joe's car speeding up to kill him. Had she already been stabbed by then? He never had found out exactly what happened in there without him. He only knew Furiosa kept her grip on him no matter what—

More pain. More nausea. More blackness and blindness and the world slipping away, at last, at last.

The final sensation of which Max is aware is Furiosa's hand still wrapped around his.


	4. The Price To Be Paid

 

Furiosa does not get sick until the procedure is all but over. As Solma packs the gaping wound in Max's leg, her young charges begin carrying away the rags and straw to be burned. When the charnel smells of blood and rot pass in front of Furiosa's face, she goes clammy and cold as her stomach rebels.

At least she has the presence of mind to puke into the surgical refuse. She makes no new mess; nobody has to clean up after her.

Because Max is still completely unconscious, Furiosa allows herself a few moments to step aside, rinse her mouth, and drink some water. Her whole body trembles, and she's so exhausted that it's like she drove for weeks, not merely overnight. Like Solma cut into them both.

Yet her weariness can't compare to what Max endured. The sounds coming from him before he passed out…they reminded her of the last time she had to watch Immortan Joe torture someone to death. The traitor warboy didn’t make it to the shredder; his heart exploded from the pain alone. She turns her head to watch the rise and fall of Max's bare chest. He breathes. He lives.

"Did you get it all?" Furiosa asks as Solma straightens and packs away her things.

With a shrug, Solma says, "Time will tell. Took everything I could see, but the Green knows how to hide. If it's already slithered into his blood—nothing we'd do could save him." Furiosa tries not to react to this. She's pretty good at keeping her emotions hidden, most of the time; if she weren't, she never could've fooled Immortan Joe about her loyalty. But Solma has a keener eye. More gently she adds, "If his blood's clean, though, and his leg starts to heal after this, he might be all right at that. Leg won't ever be the same, though."

"He has a brace," Furiosa says, looking at the metal-and-leather device lying on the floor. It is strangely made, with tiny screws and exact fittings—uniform and precise in the way of things from Before. Max has worn that brace a very long time. "We can modify it to help him."

"As you like, and who could do it better?" Solma gestures vaguely at Furiosa's metal arm. "He'll need someone watching over him. We'll keep him here in the healing halls, with the other—"

"No. Put him in my bedroom."

Solma cackles. "He's in no shape for that yet, Waterkeeper! Though I suppose it'd give him the will to live."

If the situation were any less grave, Furiosa would roll her eyes, maybe even laugh. As it is, she feels only a flash of irritation that she suppresses out of respect for the Fountain's healer-mother. "Put him in the _other_ bed. I'll be in mine just a few feet away. Whatever he needs, I can handle. So tell me what he'll need."

Max's needs are now simple: rest, water, and watchfulness, all of which Furiosa can provide. Of course, Solma's little scrubbers could tend Max just as well, if not better. Furiosa isn't keeping him in her room because she fears his neglect. Not out of sentimentality, either.

The fact is, most people at the Fountain are loyal to their Waterkeeper. They like the way of life that's been built here. They help form part of the ever-larger, ever-stronger web tying them all together. Furiosa may be at the top of this tower, but they are the foundation. They might yet become a community in the best and truest sense of that word. And the smaller settlements farther away, the ones who feared Joe and loathed his tyranny: Even when they resent her as Waterkeeper, they revere her as Immortan Joe's slayer.

But there are also … doubters.

No one questions that Immortan Joe truly died on the Fury Road. Enough people saw his corpse for that, though she's had to stamp down on the clandestine market in his body parts that were kept as souvenirs. Too easy for such stuff to turn into relics someday, once the darkness of Joe's shadow has faded to the mere memory of power. (Furiosa took special satisfaction in paying for a necklace someone had made of Immortan Joe's teeth, then taking them back to her room and individually grinding them to dust, one by one, imagining them still alive with nerve and root to send pain stabbing through the veil of death. It seemed to her she could hear his screams. That night she slept well.)

Yet everything else about the death of Immortan Joe and his war boys has splintered into a kaleidoscope of possibilities, in which the truth shines through in smaller and smaller shards. Some of the war boys' parents are among the people formerly known as the Wretched, and they find it hard to accept that their sons died so uselessly, at the hands of mere women. Some of the war pups had older brothers, or at least war boys they looked up to tremendously. Rictus Erectus inexplicably had his share of admirers among the Wretched; his share was of course small, but comprised entirely those who had loud mouths and little sense. She has other enemies farther away, which does not make them less dangerous.

As for those within these walls, where she should be safest…

Furiosa had _earned_ her place as an imperator. She had done what it took to get that job and to keep it. All the water she now governs cannot wash away the blood of those she'd killed. No one has forgotten the past; instead, they are all remembering their versions of it, more divergent with every passing day.

The story of the Fury Road is already passing into legend. Legends have lives of their own.

And they can turn against you at any time.

 

**

 

Furiosa lives in what had been the Wives' keep. It's the biggest and safest chamber within the Fountain, but nobody else wanted it. Some people are repulsed by the knowledge of what was done there; others are superstitious enough to believe in ghosts. But Furiosa knows every inch of the place once known as the Citadel has seen blood, so ghosts are everywhere.

Besides—that's where Joe kept the books.

If Joe read a book at any point during the past 35 years, he didn't do so where Furiosa caught him at it. He simply didn't want anyone else to have access to all these words and the information they communicate. If a book was ever found in a captured vehicle, Joe ordered it brought here. Now thousands of them lie about in stacks, smelling pleasantly musty and inviting curiosity. They are loaned to anyone who wishes, though few are fully literate these days. For herself, she reads with catholic rapacity, heedless of topic. In the week after her return to what was then still called the Citadel, the bedbound Furiosa went through a text that explained the fundamentals of astronomy, a novel about a surprisingly trusting woman in love with a werewolf, a road atlas for someplace that had been called "Perth," and a book that promised to help her identify the "seasonal palette of colors that will bring out your best, freshest, most beautiful you!"

Apparently she's a Spring.

Nonsense. So much nonsense, and even the books that should be useful—on predicting weather or rotating crops—were written for a healthier world. Not this one. Still, Furiosa likes the glimpses these books give her of the time Before.

The larger chamber of the keep is where Furiosa conducts the business of a Waterkeeper. Instead of the throne-topped, skull-crusted altars from which Immortan Joe issued commands, she has a small round table for people to sit around and discuss the matters at hand. In various ramshackle cabinets she stores records: How many vegetables and greens the hydroponic gardens are producing, how much guzzoline and ammunition they have in storage, the repair schedules for all vehicles, and so on.

Still written on the floor are the words OUR BABIES WILL NOT BE WARLORDS. What had been a personal statement, Furiosa now takes as the Fountain's motto.

There were two bedrooms, and Furiosa has claimed the smaller one. She sleeps in one of the cast-iron beds, the one that used to belong to Toast. ("You're welcome to it," Toast had said, with a shudder. "Be sure you disinfect the sheets.") The other bed has lain empty all this time. It could and perhaps should have been carried out for the use of another, but—that had been Agharad's bed. She was the one who had written on the wall, WHO KILLED THE WORLD? Neither Furiosa nor the others wanted to disturb this place where Agharad's spirit lingered most strongly.

But Furiosa feels sure Agharad would've been glad to let Max recuperate in her bed.

Once he's settled there, Furiosa pulls the blankets over his nakedness, but tucks them to one side to expose the lower half of his left leg. It's so stuffed and swaddled with bandages that it's impossible to see the wound itself. But if she glimpses blood, then—

\--then she'll have to call Solma. Furiosa refuses to think farther ahead than that.

No sooner has she finished arranging Max's blankets than she hears footsteps behind her. Furiosa turns, then relaxes as she sees Cheedo walking toward them, wide-eyed.

"It's really him," Cheedo whispers. "Really Max."

"Yeah."

Cheedo peers down at him for a long moment before remembering what she came for. "One of Solma's students said you'd need soup for him when he woke up. Here you go." She settles a canister on the nearby table, one of the really old ones they found that can keep warm things hot for hours on end. "I strained it thin, so it should be easy for him to digest. But plenty of veggies in there, plus some marrow broth. Should fill him up if he's hungry."

"He will be," Furiosa says. Maybe not when he first wakes. She remembers how long it took her to regain her appetite after her amputation. But she spared Max that, and outside the Fountain, people are always hungry. "Thanks, Cheedo. This will do well."

Taking responsibility for the Fountain kitchens is not merely a matter of making soup. Cheedo helps the other cooks figure out how to feed the most people with the smallest amount of waste, and what foods provide the best nutrition while requiring the least resources to produce. The Fountain's kitchens run massive mess halls now, where thousands of people are able to get at least two good meals a day. The work suits Cheedo's nurturing spirit.

"They've been saying for so long that Max wasn't real," Cheedo whispers. "I think I'd almost started to believe it myself."

"You couldn't have forgotten Max."

"Of course not. But—sometimes I'd think about it, and it would sound so strange. That a man would agree to fight with us, for us. Without any of us giving him anything in return. Not because he wanted us for his own, either. Just _because_."

"I know." Furiosa thinks back to that first terrible fight, when Max was still muzzled and nearly feral. He had a loaded gun to her head, and at that point he had no intention of helping them. All he wanted was the war rig and a chance to get away. And yet still he had spared her life, firing warning shots into the sand.

Cheedo's dark eyes search hers. "The others ought to see Max, once he's ready for it."

"He won't be ready for a while. Days, at least."

"All right." Cheedo pauses, like she wants to say something else, but Furiosa shakes her head. Max needs quiet, and rest.

Anyway, she already knows what Cheedo wants to tell her: _If they believe in Max, they'll believe in you. In us._

True. But Furiosa doesn't intend to sacrifice Max's fragile health to a few poisonous whispers, no matter how toxic they might be.

Even as she hears Cheedo closing the enormous door behind her, however, a gravelly voice from the bed mumbles, "They need to see me?"

"You shouldn't be awake." Furiosa kneels by his bed, aghast. Why didn't she insist that Solma give Max some doze to keep him down? "I'll get something."

"S'all right. Won't – won't be awake long." Max's stare is unfocused, feverish. "Who was that?"

"Cheedo. You remember her?"

"Long black hair," he confirms. "Pregnant."

"The baby was stillborn." Cheedo wept—they all had—but their hopes had always been muted. So many babies fail to survive the womb these days, and most of the seed Joe passed down was no good. "She's all right now. How do you feel?"

"Like my bones are on fire." Max's head lolls to one side, like he's trying to look at his own wound but lacks the strength to lift up. "They didn't take the leg."

"I wouldn't let them."

His eyes study hers for a moment, looking for something he doesn't find. "Did they get it all?"

Furiosa manages to smile a little for him. "The healer-mother thinks so. You cheated death again, Max."

"I cheat him a lot." Max's version of an answering smile is more of a grimace. "That bastard's gotta be pissed."

She gives him some water to drink; as she'd suspected, he's not ready for the soup. Nor does he need the pot she stashed beneath his bed. The severe dehydration most people in the Wastelands endure means they often don't urinate until their second or third day after drinking water again. Both she and Max are pragmatic enough not to make a fuss about anything so ordinary when it finally arises.

And yet—it's one more intimacy, like the pain he let her see, or the way he cupped the back of her head and looked into her eyes when they came together in Parttown. (Max remembered that gesture as though he'd been born to the Vuvalini, which touches Furiosa for no reason she can name.)

Max mumbles, "Why do they need to see me?"

"Huh?" Furiosa says, though she realizes what he heard. She's just hoping she won't have to explain it yet.

No such luck. "Cheedo said they needed to see me. The people out there. What for?"

"It's not important."

His gravelly voice gets rougher. "Come on. Distract me."

Of course. The same internal politics that tie Furiosa's gut into knots would be, for Max, merely something else to think about besides his terrible pain. "There are people who don't believe the truth about what happened on the Fury Road. About how we killed Immortan Joe."

" _You_ killed Immortan Joe," Max says, in pure admiration.

Furiosa allows herself to savor the satisfaction again; it never loses its shine. "The thing is, some people here, and more people in Gastown and the Bullet Farm—they think we planned it out that way. That from the beginning, the whole thing was a plot to murder Joe. They know we couldn't have done it without help. What they can't accept was that the help came from one redeemed war boy and from a stranger who walked away without asking for anything in return."

Max's skeptical eyes crinkle at the sides. "Who do they think did it instead?"

"The Gastown people think it was the leader of the Bullet Farm, and vice versa. They think I'm only a—puppet, a figurehead. That the real mastermind is hidden inside the Fountain, giving out just enough water to lull people into trusting them. And then we'll turn on them again."

He doesn't seem to understand, at first. Furiosa thinks the fever must be taking its toll on his reason. No wonder. She hopes it's dulling his senses back down to unconsciousness; the longer he sleeps, the longer he'll be out of pain, and the better his chances for recovery will be.

Sometimes she thinks that's why so many people die young now. They die because they cannot rest, and there is nothing human beings need more than a chance to rest, to stop, to unclench and let go.

Furiosa can't remember the last time she left like she could let go.

Just when it seems that Max must have nodded off, he mumbles, "They don't know you."

"What's that?" Furiosa asks, in no expectation of a coherent answer. She takes one of the damp cloths and brushes it across his forehead, to cool him down.

"Those people in Gastown. Wherever. The ones who think you're a puppet. _You_." His eyes open, and she realizes what an extraordinary color his eyes are—blue-green, not brilliant but subtle, the shade of water itself. Max shakes his head slightly. "If they think that—they don't know you."

Furiosa smiles despite herself. "Exactly."

She takes his hand as he drifts off, not asking herself until afterward why she thought he would want her to do that. But he must have done, because his fingers remain clasped around hers long after he's fallen asleep.

**

_"Who should have the meat, Furiosa?"_

_She raises her remaining hand to point at her mother. Mama smiles, a fierce, ugly smile that had too many teeth._

_(This isn't right. Nobody ate it. The flesh rot made it poisonous. The Vuvalini burned it, I know they did, they let me watch so I could say goodbye—)_

_But this time they put her severed hand on a plate, but they aren't the Vuvalini, and the uknown shadows slide it before Mama, but it isn't Mama any longer, it's Immortan Joe. He roars, "If this is good, we'll have the rest of her for supper."_

Furiosa gasps as she bolts upright in bed. Her breaths are shallow and hitch in her chest. For the first time in too long, she can feel her old stab wounds—both the one the warboy inflicted to kill her and the one Max used to save her. They catch like barbs in her abdomen, resenting every inhalation.

At first she wants to curse her nightmare. Immortan Joe has no way to hurt her any longer except through her dreams, so he tries them often.

Then she realizes how fitfully Max is stirring in his bed, and knows this dream was no hell-vision sent by Immortan Joe. It was Mama, or maybe one of the spirits of Max's own past, scaring her to wake her up in time to help.

"Max?" Furiosa slides out of bed. She wears a tank and leggings; Max is naked. He's kicked off his covers now. His exposed body doesn't matter nearly as much as his leg, which seems to be swollen even worse than before. Is that normal?

She lays her hand on his forehead and feels the fever raging again. Her hopes fall to cinders. The flesh rot still has him; by now it may be in his blood.

Her touch awakens Max—no. He was already awake. But it brings him back to some sense of where and when he is. "Not good."

"No," she says dully.

"Guess that's it, then." At first Furiosa thinks he's simply giving up on life, as easily as he did that night on the Fury Road when he walked away from them to stall their attackers while they got the war rig free from the mud. She's never forgotten how casual he was about it—about dying for people he hadn't known twenty-four hours earlier. But then he adds, "Solma—she'll take the leg."

"Not if you don't want. She could try cutting more of the rot away, or—or if you'd rather die intact—" Furiosa's voice chokes off. She needs him to live.

Max shakes his head. At first she thinks he's refusing something, then realizes he's closer to fond exasperation. "No one dies intact," he says. "We all get ripped. One way or another. We're just walking scars a long time before the end."

"You don't understand." She glances at her metal prosthetic, lying on the chair nearest her bed. It gleams dully in the light from the one candle burning in the far corner.

"Is it – that bad?" Max's voice catches; the pain is getting to him. "You make it look—not easy, I know it's not easy. But—all right."

"It _is_ all right," Furiosa says. In many ways, she loves her prosthetic. She thanks it for all it can do, knows that it does more than make up for her limitations. It gives her strength and options she would never have possessed otherwise. And yet, for all that, she cannot bring herself to tell Max to cast aside his leg as she did her hand.

The reason why has to do with the ever-twitching phantom limb.

"It haunts you," she finally adds. "What you leave behind. You never stop feeling it. Never stop missing it."

Slowly, Max nods. "I know."

Only then does Furiosa realize how many things this is true for. Every person still alive in the wastelands has lost so much of who they were before, and every single one of them still feels the pain, the twitch, the weight.

She kneels by his bed. Very quietly she says, "You're sure?"

His rain-colored eyes reveal that he's afraid of the pain, and no doubt of how different his life will be after. He should be. Yet Max says only, "It's like you said. Survive."

Furiosa gets to her feet to summon Solma, who will take Max's leg within the next half-hour. But before she turns away, she rests her forehead against his, as if she could absorb some of his fear and pain and endure it as her own.

 


End file.
